Finding Home || bxb

14

"So, are you guys like dating now or what?" Charlie asked in the car ride to college. Again, we didn't have a lesson at the same time but this time he was the one with the 9am class but I was growing accustomed to the lifts he gave me, so I decided to just come in earlier than needed.

"What? No, of course not," I replied maybe a little bit too defensively. "We're like barely even a thing. We're just talking."

"Ahh the talking stage. Let's see if you make it any further. I'm routing for you."

"I can get past any stage if I want to," I said this time maybe a little bit too confidently.

"Yeah yeah, sure. Oh, I wanted to ask actually, what are you doing at lunch time?"

"Sitting with Dahlia as usual in Cafe B," I replied referring to one out of the five cafeterias we had. Only two actual served proper lunches while the others all served things like sandwiches and paninis. Cafe B's specialty was subs where you can choose all your own fillings.

"Cool, why don't my friends and I come join you? If you're cool with that obvs," he suggested. Charlie wanted to come sit with me?

"Uhh, yeah sure, I'll tell Dahlia to get us a bigger table."

——

By the time lunch time came around, I'd had one class and spent all morning, until that class started, watching Brooklyn Nine Nine on my laptop.

I hadn't had History yet this week, so everyone stared a little too much when I walked in with my still healing black eye. With a seating plan and too many people in our college for me to actually know many people, I knew about two people in this class and those were just the two sat on either side of me. They always spent the whole lesson talking to people on the other sides of them though so unless the teacher asked me specifically a question, I barely talked at all.

"Alden, what would you say was the main cause of World War One?" Steven asked, my history teacher. Our college had a very casual policy in terms of clothing and teacher-student relationships. We could pretty much wear whatever we wanted as long as we weren't just shirtless, and we called all our teachers by the first name. I remember it took me a while to get used to not calling my teachers 'miss' or 'sir' and it always felt so embarrassing whenever I got it wrong.

Shit, okay I know this. "Umm I think I would argue that a series of international crises sort of escalated all the events that led to it, and that it wasn't just one main cause," I replied.

"Can you explain that?" Steven asked.

I'd been working on this at home while I hadn't been in college, so I knew exactly what to say. Kind of. "The Moroccan crisis led to Italy declaring war on the Ottoman Empire. The Balkan League was created afterwards leading to the Balkan Wars where Austria and Serbia's conflicts grew. The second Moroccan Crisis led to Germany getting more insecure in their position so they created the 1912 Army Bill but then that triggered an arms race."

I then went on to explain how I thought all of this started to destabilise European relations between the Great Powers with Germany also wanting to desperately prove themselves as a Great Power. "Then there was the July crisis because every decision just provoked and radicalised the crisis like Russia starting mobilising and then Germany demanding them to stop. Obviously, Russia refused leading to Germany declaring war against them and then against France. And then Germany invaded Belgium which brought the British in who declared war on Germany because of Belgium's neutrality, and then the world war began."

"Good, good," Steven said when my nervous rambling was over. "Make sure you have evidence to back all of that up. I like how you brought in the army bill. Well done."